The Quickening eBook

Suddenly the frenzy, so alien to the Gordon blood,
spent itself, leaving him cool and determined.
Quite methodically he found his pocket-knife, and
he remembered afterward that he had been collected
enough to choose and open the sharper of the two blades.
There was a quick, sure slash at the shoe-lacing and
the crippled foot was freed. With another yell,
this time of glad triumph, he snatched up his burden
and backed away with it in the tilting half-second
when the deluge of slag, firing the very air with
shriveling heat, was pouring down the slope.

Then he fell in a heap, with Farley under him, and
fainted as a woman might—­when the thing
was done.

XXXVI

FREE AMONG THE DEAD

The skirmish-line rivulets of melted slag had crept
to within a few feet of the two at the toe of the
dump when the men of the engine crew ran with water
to drench them.

Tom recovered consciousness under the dashing of the
water, and was one of the bearers who carried Vincent
Farley on a hastily improvised stretcher to the surrey
waiting at the office gate.

Afterward, he went for Doctor Williams, deriding himself
Homerically for playing the second act in the drama
of the Good Samaritan, but playing it, none the less.
And not to quit before he was quite through, he drove
with the physician to Warwick Lodge, and sat in the
buggy till the other Good Samaritan had performed
his office.

“Nothing very serious, is it, Doctor?”
he asked, when the old physician took the reins to
drive his horse-holder home.

“H’m; he’ll be rather badly scarred,
and there is a chance that he will lose the sight
of one eye,” was the reply. Then: “It’s
none of my quarrel, Tom, but you hammered him pretty
cruelly—­with a stone, too, I should say.”

“Did I?” grinned Tom. He was willing
to bear the blame until Kincaid should have ample
time to disappear.

“Yes; and with all due allowance for your provocation,
it was a good bit beneath you, my boy.”

The younger man laughed grimly. “Wait till
you know the full size of the provocation, Doctor.
I’m not half as bad as I might be. Another
man would have left him to burn—­here and
hereafter.”

The doctor said no more. It was not his province
to make or meddle in the quarrel between the Gordons
and the Farleys. And Tom also was silent, having
many things to render him reflective.

When he was put down at Woodlawn it was after one
o’clock. Yet he sat for an hour or more
on the veranda, smoking many pipes and trying as he
could to prefigure the future in the light of the night’s
happenings.

What an insufferable animal Farley was, to be sure!—­with
the love of a woman like Ardea Dabney failing to keep
him on the hither side of common decency! Would
Ardea break with him, now that she knew the truth?
Tom shook his head. Not she; she would stand
by him all the more stoutly, if not for love, then
for pride’s sake. That was the fine thing
in her loyalty.